O'Brien, Hackenberg get sweet first taste of Michigan rivalry

UNIVERSITY PARK — It's the series that gave us a phantom two seconds and a whole series of controversial (at least according to one side) critical calls on the field.

As a result, it's the series that is basically responsible for giving college football the review system, courtesy of you-know-who.

Saturday night, the first game in this series under the new Happy Valley regime gave us yet another controversial call in the eyes of Penn State fans, and yet another heart-pounding finish featuring one of the great last-minute touchdown drives in school history.

But in the end, for a change, it was a happy ending for Nittany Nation.

Welcome to Penn State-Michigan, Bill O'Brien.

You too, Christian Hackenberg.

The Nittany Lions and No. 18 and previously unbeaten Michigan took the season's first sellout, and the largest home crowd since the emotional Nebraska finale of the 2011 season, on a ride that featured more twists and turns and ups and downs than the wildest roller coaster in your imagination. Just about every one of 107,844 were still around at the finish of the longest game in both schools' history.

Just about every one of them, except for those dressed in maize and yellow, stuck around afterward to revel in what was by far the biggest win in O'Brien's fledgling tenure, a 43-40 four-overtime triumph.

"I'm a little frazzled," a reporter responded to O'Brien when the coach corrected him on play terminology during the post-game interview.

"Well, join the club," O'Brien said with a smile as the room broke out in laughter.

Winning, O'Brien said, is like salt water — "It cures a lot of ills," he said — and there were plenty of ills to cover, both leftover from last week's miserable showing at Indiana and from a game in which the Lions were outscored 24-3 over the first 19 minutes of the second half to turn a 21-10 halftime lead into a 34-24 deficit.

Start with Michigan's touchdown return on a Zach Zwinak fumble on the first play of the third quarter. Add a blown coverage (no deep safety help) for linebacker Glenn Carson on Devin Gardner's 37-yard touchdown strike to Devin Funchess with 10:28 left in regulation to give the Wolverines a 10-point lead.

And then there was a pass interference call on Adrian Amos, his third of the game, that bailed Michigan out of a third-and-12 with 3:23 left in regulation after a Sam Ficken field goal narrowed the gap to a touchdown. The call incited the white-clad crowd, not to mention the Internet minions who were convinced it was yet another call by the Big Ten Conference's "Referines."

In reality, it was a needless, mindless play on the part of Adams that at the moment seemingly cost the Lions a chance at a tying touchdown, especially when the Penn State offense got the ball back 80 yards from the end zone with 52 seconds left and no timeouts remaining.

But five plays later, including a review that turned what was ruled an incomplete pass into a 14-yard completion to Allen Robinson and an acrobatic catch by Robinson at the Michigan 1-yard line, Hackenberg stuck the football over the goal line for the tying touchdown to send the game into overtime.

In overtime, the Lions survived a missed field goal and a fumble by Robinson on a reverse with help of a blocked field goal by Kyle Baublitz and a missed 33-yard field goal by Michigan kicker Brandon Gibbons.

It's called resiliency, and O'Brien said it's become a trademark of the Lions of this era.

"So we fumble on the reverse, and our defense goes out there and holds them, and then we alter the field goal," O'Brien said. "In my opinion, the kids that hung around here, they go, 'All right, that was a bad play.' They don't say, 'Oh my God, we're going to lose now [after a bad play].' They say, 'We've got an opportunity to go out there and try to stop them,' and that's the definition of resiliency."

In the fourth overtime, after Gibbons put Michigan in front with a field goal, O'Brien passed up a potential tying field goal on fourth-and-inches at the 16, with Bill Belton running wide right before turning inside for a 3-yard gain that kept the game alive.

Then, in what some might call an ironic twist, a pass-interference call on Michigan in the end zone on third-and-8 set up Belton's 2-yard game-winner.

"Of course I'm going to get crucified [if Michigan stopped Penn State on the fourth down play], but that's part of the job," O'Brien said. "At that point in time — it was the fourth overtime, right? — I felt it was time for somebody to win the game. We could keep trading field goals back and fourth, but I felt it was time for somebody to win the game, and I had the opportunity to do it.

"This means a lot, beating a really good Michigan team, and we were 3-2 coming off a bad loss," O'Brien said. "When you're coaching 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-year-old guys, nothing should amaze you. There's going to be twists and turns. I've said it a million times, these are tough kids. They love Penn State, they love playing with each other. The locker room is really a great scene right now, because these kids really believe in each other. They felt bad for themselves and they felt bad for the fans last week. They came out and they practiced hard and that's what they'll do next week, and that's what they'll do leading up to Ohio State [in two weeks]. And then we'll see how we play in the game."